Style Guide
This is the style guide for the Butterfly Princess Wiki. Please read this before you do any substantial writing or editing! Spelling, Punctuation, and Grammar Articles are written in American English. Please write like someone who possesses something approaching an education. Don't abbreviate words or use excessive slang. We double-space after the end of a sentence, because we're old-fashioned like that. Article Structure For short articles, we suggest you include all the relevant factual information available, presenting a timeline (with in-universe calendar dates if possible) and how these articles relate to the main characters. For multiple short articles that share common information, please don't cut-and-paste the same article repeatedly. There are many different ways to describe the same idea; mix it up with some different sentence structure. (For example, there were 100 largely generic Dwarves mentioned as part of the Dwarf army from Stonekeep, and yet each article has its own distinct wording.) For articles of significant length (which are usually main characters or important places/artifacts), we tend to include a short summary as the introductory paragraph, followed by a character's physical attributes, known history, and finally participation in each book. Read some of the existing articles and get a feel for the article structure if you're not sure. Images We typically showcase one image of a character, but include additional images if the article length allows it, if the character is important enough, and if the image depicts the character at a different age, in an alternate costume, etc. The library of official images is steadily growing, but there are going to be some characters or objects for which official images simply do not exist yet. Fan art is allowed as long as it depicts the character with reasonable accuracy and is not patently obscene. Writing Voice The general writing voice of the wiki should match the tone of the narrative voice for the Butterfly Princess series. It is a complex combination of wordy and informal; serious in tone with dry wit interspersed throughout. It is strongly suggested that you read several dozen of the longest articles and develop a familiarity with the writing style. When writing humorous articles, it's very easy to cross the line and get too silly. Think of humor as a seasoning. Sprinkling a little here and a little there adds to the overall flavor. Dumping an entire bucket of the stuff on your plate just ruins the taste entirely. And, I have to ask, where the hell did you find an entire bucket full of paprika anyway? Factual Accuracy Any information added to an article should be directly supported by content from one of the books. Original research is discouraged, but not completely prohibited. One of the reasons this wiki exists is to provide a summary of the existing body of official work. Speculation about the facts really doesn't belong here. If there is a notable contradiction between two sets of facts (for example, if information from one book counters a data point from an earlier book) then it is worth mentioning. If you come across statements that you believe to be factually inaccurate, it wouldn't hurt anybody to throw in the template, just to be safe. Meta-Data and Pseudo-Canon The bulk of the articles on this wiki were written by the author of the series, who knows things about the stories and characters that you don't. Fans of the series may still discover new things about the characters by reading their wiki entries. Think of the wiki as an extension of the fictional Butterfly Princess universe. Category:Editing